


How should we like it were stars to burn

by middlemarch



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Conversations, F/M, Poetry, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 04:39:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10689909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She had been relieved they weren't discussing her poem this week until Ross started reading.





	How should we like it were stars to burn

“A sestina? That’s what wasn’t good enough?” Demelza said, only slightly breathless from walking briskly to keep up with Ross as they left the seminar room. It was unwise, almost certainly, and she’d probably regret it, but not as much as not saying anything. It would sound better and worse when she recounted it to Verity and there would be an enormous glass of wine or steaming cup of Lapsang souchong to console her, depending on how Ross responded. “You’re bloody terrifying, you know that, don’t you?” she added quietly, knowing he could hear her but could ignore her. It needed to be said, regardless.

“It’s nothing to make so much of,” he muttered, still gazing ahead of them, across the quad that was bisected neatly by walking paths, other students strolling in twos or threes towards the dormitories, the libraries, the pub across the road.

“Liar,” she said, letting the word hang between them, heavier than any line in Ross’s poem, whose syllables balanced to a feather-weight.

“I can’t write them any other way, I only hear the words in verse. You can feel your heart beat in your chest—do you take credit for it?” he replied. She wondered what exactly Agatha made of him, from her position of greater wisdom, of having written so many more poems and read even more. Demelza thought of what he said and felt her heart steady within her, her breath rushing in her ears. He meant poetry was music, a shifting melody that moved through him and she envied him.

“It’s not only that and you know it,” she pushed back. They’d spent the majority of the class on his sestina and Elizabeth’s contribution, a poem that was an uneasy translation of a little-know poem by Rumi, except that Agatha had known the original and recited it before she had picked apart Elizabeth’s lyric like a surgeon at a post-mortem, unconcerned with pain as the body was dead. Demelza had almost pitied Elizabeth. Almost.

“What do you expect me to say? To boast like George? To offer you a dissertation about the form like Francis would do or flutter my hands around like Liza?” he said. _Liza_ he said, like Liza, when she’d only been Elizabeth in the class, not a hair out of place, drawn back so her long neck was apparent, the jade pendant earrings she wore swinging as leaned forward in concentration, her white hands moving through the air as she spoke like a poem Demelza couldn’t understand. But Ross could. And Ross did. It would be whiskey tonight, neat, enough that she could forget how he had sounded reading his poem and what it had done to her, how distracted she’d been by the shape of the words and the shape of his mouth, the dazed look in his eyes when he’d caught her looking at him and how it had gone away like smoke she could still taste sweet on her tongue.

“I don’t expect anything from you, Ross,” she answered, reaching up to push back a curl that had come loose; he grazed her hand with his when she dropped hers back down.

“You should. You’re the only one who understood what I wrote. You knew where it went wrong, where I ruined it,” he said, letting go of her hand but not before he’d traced the curve at the base of her thumb to her wrist, a caress she’d never known before. 

“It wasn’t ruined. You only lost your way,” she replied, glancing at him. He was looking back at her, his pace slowed. There was something about him that wasn’t handsome, but fey, feral, that made her hear the music that ran through his head, that lit his dark eyes.

“Help me find it?” he asked.

“Isn’t that Agatha’s job?” she said quickly.

“I’d rather it be your pleasure,” he remarked. She laughed then because she had to. They’d walked nearly all the way to where she lived and there was nothing she could think of to say. She hadn’t yet written the poem that would be the answer.

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel to my first poetry-class story, now we learn a little more about Ross-as-a-poet. A sestina is a fixed verse form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern.
> 
> The title is another line from W.H. Auden's poem "The More Loving One."


End file.
